Arthur H. Frazzer 
William Gunn Price 
and 
The Price Current Meters 
The development and use of current meters, which provide 
Streamflow data by measuring the velocity and discharge of water 
flowing in rivers, has been an important factor in providing for 
municipal water supplies and in the construction of dams, 
bridges, and culverts, as well as contributing significant informa- 
tion toward the solution of territory litigations and public health 
problems resulting from stream pollution. 
This paper traces the history and development of an outstanding 
family of current meters, the Price family, which is interrelated 
with the history of the United States Geological Survey. It also 
presents a biography of that remarkable 19th-century American 
inventor, William Gunn Price. 
Tue Avutuor: Arthur H. Frazier, as former chief of the 
Division of Field Equipment in the United States Geological 
Survey, had exceptional opportunities for accumulating technical 
and historical information on current meters, and he provided 
many of the meters now im the collections of the Smithsonian 
Institution. 
|B THIS MODERN AGE, the expression current meter 
tends to conjure up a mental image of an ammeter, 
which measures electrical currents, rather than an 
image of the device it originally was used to describe, 
namely, an instrument for measuring the velocity 
(in feet per second) and the discharge (in cubic feet 
per second) of the water flowing in rivers. The major 
purpose of this article is to discuss an important 
family—the Price family—of current meters of that 
old-fashioned type and to present some little-known 
information about the man whose portrait appears 
in figure 1, William Gunn Price. It was he who 
PAPER 70: WILLIAM GUNN PRICE AND THE PRICE CURRENT METERS 39 
